NetaG: An app to solve your civic issues

IT professional Krushnaal Pai's app helps citizens post civic woes on the app; registered corporators and politicians can resolve and update progress

Fed up of meeting disinterested administrative officers to complain about civic issues related to water scarcity, piling garbage and potholes, techie Krushnaal Pai decided to take matters into his own hands.

Krushnaal Pai and the app, NetaG

The 26-year-old IT professional, who lives at Pune’s Pimpri Chinchwad area, has designed an app called NetaG to ensure that the grievances of citizens frustrated by lack of civic amenities reach local corporators. The app enables citizens to upload their issues with photographs anonymously.

The local corporators and political leaders, who have registered on the app, get alerted when an ‘issue owner’ as the citizen is called, uploads information. Since January, over 250 citizens and 15 corporators have downloaded the apps, and at least 50 civic issues have been resolved.

Pai, who hails from Mangalore, funded the app by putting in Rs 50,000, a sum he earned as his first salary after he completed his masters in Computer Engineering from MIT College, Alandi in Pune.

“When I turned 18 and earned the right to vote, I was clueless about local political leaders and the work they did. I wanted to know more about how he/she addressed citizen grievances, but there was just no data. It is ironic that we all are living in the age of smartphones and live in our social networks, but never use them for this purpose,” said Pai.

Seventy-year-old Kalpana Marathe said she had been inconvenienced by the way branches of trees growing outside entered her home for the past 10 years. “I had written letters to various civic authorities but in vain. Finally, I downloaded NetaG, posted my issue and within 15 minutes, a local corporator came to my home with the Tree Authority officer and immediately trimmed the branches.”

Sitting corporator Sameer Masulkar of Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) area said, “The app helps me as it specifies the issues I have resolved and highlights my supporters. I prefer NetaG instead of citizen forums on WhatsApp as I know my deadlines better. It is more transparent.”